Textual consumption in digital spaces has come under scrutiny by educators who worry about youth's surface-level comprehension of such texts as well as the polarizing nature of online discourse. This paper synthesizes affective concepts of critical witness and glimmers of care to explore two cases in which adolescent writers in digital OST…

This study examines the ways pre-service English language arts teachers (PSTs) conceptualized activism and experimented with visual and multimodal approaches to composing about activism. Drawing on qualitative methods, we examined 22 PSTs' graphic narratives completed as part of their teacher preparation coursework, and center our discussion on…

The purpose of this study is to understand how Latinx preservice teachers (LPSTs) engage their multimodal and multilingual literacies to create comic strips about the knowledge and pedagogies found within their homes located within with U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Drawing on pedagogies of the home and Chicanx/Latinx multimodality, the findings…

Drawing from Appadurai's notion of mediascape, in which global cultural flows simultaneously construct local/global perspectives, I explored how youth and young adults across the globe make sense of digitally shared space, with a specific focus on the Webtoon reader discussion forum. Findings illustrated that the participants constructed the…

The article describes the results of teachers using a critical language lens to analyze linguistic stereotypes in TV series, movies, cartoons, and social media posts. I share the key questions teachers asked about language use in texts as well as the results of their analysis. Based in a cultural modeling pedagogy (Lee, 2007), teachers examined…

As our students' consumption of internet memes through social media increases, a critical perspective toward these memes becomes increasingly important. Memes present teachers with a powerful and relevant way to approach critical analysis and discussion in the 21st-century classroom. In this article, the authors present a framework for…

Because social studies educators are expected to incorporate literacy into their instruction, it is important to consider how prospective teachers interact with literacy frameworks as they engage with social studies content. This qualitative case study examines two pre-service social studies teachers enrolled in a teacher preparation course at a…

This discussion describes a collaboration between a high school for recently arrived immigrant and refugee youth and a local college. Across 6 weeks, college tutors read a wordless graphic novel, "The Arrival" (Tan, 2007), with newcomer students to support oral English language development, to develop interpretations, and to invite…

In many classrooms, teachers have started to incorporate graphic novels in classroom instruction. However, research has suggested that some readers may have limited understanding of how to read graphic novels, which can create challenges for teachers using the medium. Drawing from a larger study, this article highlights two cases, an expert…

This article is an international reflection on literacy, creativity, and student engagement. The authors collaborated to help Nigerian youths and their teachers develop, design, and share original comic books. By leveraging student engagement for literacy learning, the authors highlighted the crucial role of creativity in the classroom. The…

The authors document research completed in 10th-grade language arts classes where a canonical play was read alongside a graphic novel in the hopes of shifting student understandings of power and privilege in literature. Using teacher action research as a methodological framework for this qualitative study, a teacher and researcher engaged in…

A growing body of work has contributed to the theorizing and practice of disciplinary literacy instruction at the secondary level. However, there has been relatively little attention paid to pedagogical supports--texts and practices--that can foster historical literacy development in English learners who begin their U.S. schooling in middle or…

Although the implementation of multimodalities in education is much lauded by education research, the educational value of such formats is uncertain for education stakeholders. This study relied on the use of focus group interviews and field notes to better understand how a group of middle school students felt about their graphic novel reading…

Although the popularity and use of graphic novels in literacy instruction has increased in the last decade, few sustained analyses have examined adolescents' reading processes with informational texts in social studies classrooms. Recent research that has foregrounded visual, emotional, and embodied textual responses situates this qualitative…

Graphic novels are an increasingly popular format that educators can use as a tool to teach reading and writing skills across the K-12 curriculum. This article describes a project in which incarcerated youths collaborated with a graphic illustrator to create a graphic novel about teens dealing with issues related to HIV/AIDS. The graphic novel is…